


all you have is your fire (and the place you need to reach)

by mirrorfade



Series: the reaper grins [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Sibling Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:08:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorfade/pseuds/mirrorfade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It comes to Bethany’s attention that people are calling her sister a monster. They’re right and wrong in all the ways they can’t understand. Agressive!Hawke and Bethany understand each other perfectly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all you have is your fire (and the place you need to reach)

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Hozier’s _Arsonist’s Lullaby_. TW for violence and cannibalism. I always thought Bethany and Hawke had the most interesting of the game’s possible sibling dynamics. Hawke is possibly a serial killer and Bethany might not be as sugar-sweet as she first appears. And apparently agressive!hawke is now my muse.

Carver dies badly. The body falls. Goes _crunch_.

Years later, Bethany has nightmares about that sound. The impact of a body against the ground. That sudden stillness. Mother crying even as the darkspawn approach. And that stillness. Always, the stillness. The way that Hawke turned Carver’s face away, flipped him onto his belly so he couldn’t watch them go. 

After that, Hawke never says their brother’s name. Like he was never even there. It’s Hawke’s way, Bethany knows. Her sister stands close to the people that matter and when they die – so many of them have died – then she leaves the bodies behind. It’s not a kind world they live in. 

“I miss him,” she says one night, when the fire has burned low and Gamlen is snoring off in his own rotting bed, a bottle clutched in one hand. “He would have hated it here. But I miss him.”

Bethany and Hawke share a room. There’s a bed and a nightstand and her sister’s armor rack. Nothing else. Sometimes, if they’ve been lucky with the coin, they buy tall beeswax candles to cast dancing shadows over all the old walls. When they were kids, Hawke would make shadow puppets while their father whispered stories to them all. Wild things. Hawke never spoke, never contributed, but her hands always made the dragons and heroic knights to mirror the legends that their father conjured. 

Sometimes, when the walls feel especially thin, Hawke climbs down from the top bunk and sleeps on the floor by Bethany’s bed. She never nudges Bethany aside, asking for room, for contact and comfort. Instead, Hawke takes a blanket and sleeps on the ground, one hand curled around the edge of the bedpost. 

Sometimes Hawke cries in her sleep. It is the only time she says Carver’s name anymore. 

They do not talk about that. 

Bethany rests her head against the pillow. She has known better and worse pillows. Such is the life of an apostate. “Do you miss Carver?”

In the bunk above her, Hawke is silent. 

If she focuses, Bethany can hear her breathing. _You cry for him_ , she does not say, because that is cruel. Just like it is cruel when their mother tells Hawke, _you let him die_. Just like it is cruel when Bethany, secretly, wonders if it might not be true. 

“Hawke?”

“Go back to sleep.”

 _He hated you sometimes_ , Bethany doesn’t say. Surely everyone must know this. Carver and Hawke had that sort of relationship. Competitive and fierce, fistfights in the dark, Fereldan mud and terrible words spat over crossed blades. But at night they would play cards, swords resting at their sides, and Bethany knows the two of them loved to spar first thing in the morning, before the sun had finished rising. Perhaps they would have not close if not for the fighting. Bethany knows that Hawke went to war for their brother. And why not? Family is nothing unless they are _yours_. 

Bethany pulls the blanket over her head and retreats to her shadow-puppet dreams. 

**

They trade Wesley’s shield away two days into the new city. Kirkwall has given them no shelter that has not been won by blood, no matter all the things that Gamlen claims as kindness. As if it’s his doing that the roof no longer leaks, or that the meat that Hawke puts on their table is no longer infested by worms. But the bonds of family mean more than they ought to for Mother. Gamlen is her brother and she loves him in a confused sort of way that he occasionally – and never without the help of a stiff drink – returns in clumsy ways. 

Hawke does not like Uncle Gamlen. But he is family. Mother likes him. Therefore Hawke chases his enemies away and brings home bottles of rough whiskey in addition to sweet tea for their mother. Bethany only smiles, and washes cracked plates as best she can. 

Family is nothing, until suddenly it is gone. And you realize, like those poets always said, that it was everything and now you are empty. 

Aveline thins her mouth when they sell her husband’s shield. Hawke gives her a new one without fanfare. 

“There,” she growls, shoving the thing at Aveline. All of their number must have good armor, else they will die like Carver. And Hawke will not allow them to die. “Try that.”

Bethany and Hawke don’t talk much. But a person can say a thousand things in silence. That night, Bethany wakes up to find Hawke sitting on the floor, narrow eyes shining in the dark. Watching her. Hawke holds her sword across her knees, and only nods when she sees Bethany looking back at her. 

Go back to sleep, the nod says. 

Later, Bethany realizes that Hawke sacrificed her own blanket that night. 

They do not speak of it in the morning, and will never speak of it afterwards. 

That day, they go out to make money. Aveline goes on to kill bandits with the new shield, with all the grace of the chevalier she never could have been. She says nothing about the pain it costs her, the loss of something tangible and _real_ connecting her to the past, but Bethany sees. 

She says, “Wesley seemed like a nice man.”

For a templar. And maybe he would have been a decent man in spite of that. There was never any time to find out. 

Aveline says, “Thank you.”

**

There are days when they can’t get any work at all. Too many hungry people in a city whose walls are creeping ever closer. Bethany touches her sister’s arm briefly. “We’ll be okay, sister.”

Hawke grunts and doesn’t shake her off. 

Later they go out to the dangerous parts of the city and wait for the gangs to attack them. When it’s done, she and Hawke loot the bodies. The armor is shabby and the weapons ill cared for, but they fetch coin nonetheless. Bethany tries not to think about it too much. If she’s careful and quick, she doesn’t have to kill anyone – just knock them unconscious or make them sleep. Enough that Hawke can kneel down and strip their bodies of anything useful, but leave them breathing – sometimes naked, but alive. 

“Mother could use a new dress,” Bethany offers when they’re walking back, arms piled high with stolen things. But fairly won, in the end. “It would lift her spirits.”

Something nice instead of just practical. 

“Get her one,” Hawke grunts. Then: “Get one for yourself.”

“We don’t have the coin for both.”

“We will.”

The promise echoes. Night after night. If they need something, food or armor or medicine, then Hawke says, _we will_. We will find it. And then they do. One way or another. 

Bethany wishes she could be like that sometimes. So sure of everything. As if the world would just bend if she only pushed hard enough. 

**

There was a time when Hawke was someone else. Something else. She went by a different name, one that only their mother uses anymore. Candor, sweet girl, named for the moment when she was supposedly born laughing. Candor Hawke, the eldest among them, big sister, grinning fool, horsie sometimes, when she’d let Bethany ride on her shoulders, hands fisted in her sister’s hair for reins. Then as she grew tall and muscular, Candor, the awkward charmer, the one who sat and listened and made friends with everyone by virtue of nothing but _watching_ them with silent intensity. 

Then things changed, and she was just Hawke, brooding, angry Hawke. Or perhaps she had always been that way and simply grown into it, as she’d grown into the armor and heavy sword. Bethany can’t say there was a single event that triggered it, can’t even name when she noticed the change. Only that she turned around one day, and her sister was Hawke. Just Hawke, no one else, and Candor might as well have been a secret. The useless kind that no one really wanted to know in the first place. 

**

In the early days, Aveline stayed with them because there was nowhere else, and none of them had the coin for a room at the Hanged Man. Bethany and Hawke shared a bed in those days. Aveline and Hawke were both too big to lie next to each other, and Aveline wouldn’t let Hawke sleep on the floor. She had standards, Aveline did. 

There are nights when Hawke goes out by herself, taking only her sword and the dog. This is one of those nights. Bethany pulls the blankets around her tight. “She did understand, about the shield.”

The bed groans above her, shuddering under the weight of everything that is Aveline. “What?”

“That it meant so much,” Bethany explains. Because someone should explain. “But you needed a new one, and there wasn’t enough coin. She’s been trying to buy it back, but she can’t find it.”

Privately, Bethany thinks the merchant had it melted down for scrap. But she understands the impulse. If you can’t have the person, sometimes you can have something they touched, and that can bring you comfort in the dark. 

Aveline stays quiet. Bethany closes her eyes. “I didn’t want you to think she didn’t understand.”

“Thank you,” Aveline says. 

**

There is always meat on their table. Red and strong, rough cuts. Hawke doesn’t always say where it comes from, but their mother cooks it into stew and so when the winter comes, and it comes hard in Kirkwall, they do not starve. Hawke scrapes the marrow out of the bones and gives it to Bethany. 

“So you’ll be strong,” she says, coldly. 

Bethany just smiles. You learn to ignore the taste, after a while. 

**

Despite what people think, Ser Cullen wasn’t the first Templar to come nosing around. There were always a few slumming down at the Hanged Man, barely ever in armor, but always _there_. Sometimes it was just their spies. Someone listening in the corner. But eventually they’d come in their shining armor, and you’d have to hide and get out the bribe money. 

Two of them come to Gamlen’s house, half out of their armor and so drunk their eyes gleam. Bethany wrinkles her nose at the smell, and very deliberately does not panic when she opens the door. You can never panic. That’s when the demons find you. “Can I help you?”

The man sways, clanking against his taller partner. “We’re looking for apostates.”

The other one, the woman, bares her teeth. It’s supposed to look kind, but instead makes Bethany think of the darkspawn, and the rictus grins they wore when her brother died. The Templar’s face is pale and sunken, and she’s wearing too much lipstick. Her teeth are red with it. “Seen any?”

Bethany smiles. She’s been told it’s a very nice smile. “Won’t you come inside? You’ll want to speak with my sister.”

Then Bethany takes Gamlen and their mother out for a nice midday stroll through the market. It’s a wonderful day for shopping, Mother says. Gamlen grumbles, but not too loudly. Some part of him must understand, just as Mother understands. 

When they come back, the Templars are gone. Hawke is scrubbing the floors with an old brush. 

“We’re having stew tonight,” Hawke says. “I’ve left it in the kitchen, Mother.”

“Oh,” Gamlen mutters. “Come into coin when I wasn’t looking? The price of meat’s going up by the hour.”

Hawke scrubs the floor a tad harder than before. 

A few days later, the guardsmen find two severed heads rotting in the sewers. No one really makes the connection. 

**

Things change when she goes to the Circle, but not as much as people expect. The walls are heavier and the whispers that much closer. The danger has only shifted from knives in the dark to pointed looks from the wrong eyes, and the schemes of men with too much power. Bethany smiles at everyone and spends hours in the library, running her hands over the spines of books. So many books. She could die in this place and be happy. 

Families are not supposed to visit. 

Hawke comes anyway. She brings gifts, winter coats and fine leather boots with coins hidden inside. Fine silverite hairpins that can be used to smuggle messages between secret lovers, who will pay her in secrets and the invaluable sort of protection that a mage must survive on in a place like this. Dirty books from Isabella. A belt with a design of birds, the whole thing studded with tiny moonstones. 

“You spoil me,” Bethany murmurs, but she puts the belt on nonetheless. It’s heavier than it looks, and covers almost all of her belly. More like a corset than a belt, really, but it does not lace up in the same way. Nor is it constricting like a lady’s corset must be. 

Hawke scowls. “You should wear armor.”

“You’ve already given me some.”

The belt is lined with steel, to protect against a dagger to the gut. It only looks pretty so that the Templars won’t realize its true purpose. The only reason that Bethany is allowed these fine things is because her sister is Hawke, but that is also why she must stay on her guard. 

“I could take you from here,” Hawke says. “We could go somewhere else. I have the coin now.”

Bethany smiles. She wonders what her sister would do, if Hawke ran out of people to claim as her own. “Don’t do that. Please. It’s not so terrible here. Have you seen the library?”

They never had a library as children. 

Hawke frowns. 

“I have students as well,” Bethany continues. “I like that, you know? Teaching someone. Watching them grow. Some of them will do great things. I want to see them do those things. I was so tired of running all the time. And we’d always be running if we left. I love you, sister. But I want to stand still.”

There’s a long silence. Then Hawke nods just once. 

Bethany touches her sister’s shoulder, patting the armor. Hawke never touches anyone. There are reasons for that. “Take care of Mother, will you? I know she worries.”

**

Then their mother dies, and Bethany does not see her sister for a long time. She makes friends with the other harrowed mages, and does not mention how they cling to her, trying to become safe in the way that she is safe. Because she is protected, the circle around her and hope that by stepping close, the courtesy will be extended to them as well. 

Bethany does not tell them that this is not so. They don’t belong to Hawke, so her sister won’t save them. 

Her sister is a simple thing, when it comes down to her. 

Her sister is also the main topic of gossip these days. 

“Is it true,” one of her students whispers, “that your sister killed a Templar. And _ate_ his heart?”

Bethany pats the boy on his head. “That’s quite the story, isn’t it?”

The boy frowns, swatting at her hand in the way that boys often do when their hair is ruffled. “But is it _true_?”

“Back to your studies now, child.”


End file.
